A friend of mine has really been getting on my nerves. He is a passionate fan of all things Tom Hanks and The Shawshank Redemption and i just don’ t understand it. He’s one of those guys who thinks shawshank is the best movie ever and that Forrest Gump is an incredible movie. I told him Gump wasn’t even better than Finding Nemo which to him was ridiculous. I’m just wondering if other people are in the same boat as he is regarding shawshank and gump’s quality. For me, gump was simply a technologically impressive and sometimes funny movie and shawshank, while really good, is no where near best film ever. Ok, that’s all i felt like saying.

Saw Love & Other Drugs and thought it was solid entertainment. The brother was easily the worst part though and should have been cut, especially given he didn’t have much screentime. I wish there were some better Thanksgiving offerings, but oh well, it will do. Tangled doesn’t really interest me, so save your breath.

No way The King’s Speech wins both picture and director. At this point, it will probably win picture, with Fincher winning director. That is unless True Grit comes along and blows everything out of the water.

Marc R., I think Shawshank is a good movie, but it’s not the best ever made; in my opinion, it’s not even close. As for Gump, to be honest I’ve never seen it all, and I don’t really want to. The little bits I’ve seen just don’t appeal to me, even though I do enjoy Tom Hanks. I totally agree that these are two of the more overrated movies of the past few decades, but then again I’m the guy who thinks Citizen Kane, The Third Man, Breathless, and Blow-Up are also overrated, so what do I know.

On the subject of Forrest Gump, I guess it depends how close your friend is to the Baby Boomers. I finally saw Forrest Gump about 2 years ago, and while it certainly was entertaining and technologically impresive, it left me wondering why Pulp fiction lost Best picture to THIS MOVIE.
Finally, about 3 months ago, I figured it out. Forrest Gump is, at its most basic level, the story of the Baby Boomers, with Forrest representing the conservative, straight-laced person while Jenny stands for the liberal, experimenting type. And when you consider how the majority of Academy members grew up during the events portrayed in the film, it makes perfect sense why the film was so loved by them.

My friend is 18 yrs old so no, he wasn’t a part of the baby boomers era, but i do see your point about the academy’s love for gump and i told my friend exactly that when he used the oscars as a defense of its greatness. I just don’t understand how anyone not of that time period could possibly prefer gump to pulp fiction

I watched “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” this weekend, and its astonishing how much everything in Hollywood has changed in the last 40 years. We’ve gone from Harold And Maude getting a Christmas release to “The Way Back” being dumped in January.

To me, Forrest Gump is basically just the “Johnny B. Goode” scene from Back to the Future over and over again. It’s entertaining at first, but if I stop to think about it for a moment, it kind of angers me. Especially without the whole loopy time travel angle that at least makes thinking about the “Marty McFly invents Chuck Berry’s sound” BTTF scene fun, I just come out of Forrest Gump feeling like Robert Zemeckis doesn’t believe in originality and instead, Elvis didn’t know how to swivel his hips until he watched Haley Joel Osment do it or John Lennon needed to be spoonfed the lyrics to “Imagine.” Granted, not all of the scenes play that way, but they go to that well way too much.

I saw “Burlesque”, and I loved it. I had a smile on my face from beginning to end. Christina Aguilera actually surprised me with her comedic timing, which was very good. That lady can sing her heart out. Cher was amazing, but she always is. I see Oscar nominations for Song, and Costume Design. I loved this film so much, it might not be perfect but it’s a lot of fun to watch.

And Kyle – I had a similar reaction to ‘127 Hours’. Very good, but nothing to go ape over, at all.

THIS is the problem with all the film festival buzz. I read such overwhelmingly positive things about ‘127 Hours’ from 6-8 weeks ago, over and over again, that by the time the film came to my theater, I was underwhelmed. This happens to me every year for a couple of festival darlings.

Have to agree with Kyle on “127 Hours” – great performance by James Franco, but not a best picture. Hard to watch, don’t want to see again, but visually stimulating as expected from Danny Boyle and a very inspiring story. Aron Ralston is one seriously bad-ass dude.

Saw The Last Airbender out of curiosity and it’s a pretty fascinating trainwreck. I didn’t think it was the worst movie ever, but the kid playing the Avatar was the worst kid actor I’ve seen in years (makes me worry for Cowboys and Aliens after seeing he’s starring in it), the writing is really poor and most importantly, Shyamalan really, really, truly can’t direct action. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie where the action scenes were so unengaging. It could’ve been a very decent movie without Shyamalan.

How about some new polls? The BP one has been up there for a while now, and it’s probably pretty out of date in terms of what people are predicting.. So how about one for Best Director or Best Actress? Would be interesting to see what people are thinking in those two particularly.

@MarcR – Shawshank was a far better movie than Forrest Gump. I really preferred Nigel Hawthorne (Madness of King George) over Hanks, who won deservedly the year before for Philadelphia (a far better movie than Gump)

RABBIT HOLE:
Not having read or seen the play, I wonder how differently (not more) compelling the role of the mother (Nicole Kidman) would be if played by actress who exudes a natural warmth. (That’s not how I’d necessarily described Cynthia Nixon either, who played the role on Broadway.) There’s something about Kidman’s persona that’s steely from the git-go, and therefore slightly off-putting. (I know, I know, it’s in the writing.) Much as I admired the film, the direction and performances, I can’t help thinking that Amy Adams or Toni Collette would have blown me away in this role.

Aaron Eckhart is great in this. Dorky at times for a change, and always emotionally truthful.

Out of curiosity, how much sex/nudity is there actually in Love and Other Drugs? It seems all I hear about the movie specifically mentions the sex and nudity, but I don’t know if that’s simply because people fawn over Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, or if it’s seriously quite a bit and/or pretty graphic.

I ask because I’ve been trying to decide if I want to see it, but I try to avoid movies that have prurient sex scenes and the like. It’s not my cup of tea. There’s a fine line between “it’s artistically necessary” and “it’s not actually artistically necessary but the people doing are gorgeous so we’ll pretend it is”, and it sounds a lot like the latter from what I’ve read.

Also, even if it’s artistically justifiable I still try to avoid sex and nudity if it’s just too much. I hope no one thinks I’m a complete prude, but I just don’t care for that sort of thing. So I’m wondering on a scale from “Boogie Nights” to “Titanic” where this movie falls. Boogie Nights is one that I could stomach watching once because I felt it was justifiable even though it was just too much for me, and Titanic is one where I feel the nudity (not so much the sex) is a bit gratuitous but doesn’t take up too much time, so they kind of represent the boundaries of what I find distasteful, for what it’s worth.

I feel awkward asking this, because it seems like I’m the only person in the world who still gets uncomfortable with movie sex and nudity, but the InContention crowd seems like a group of people who can appreciate making decisions based on personal taste about this sort of thing.

Forrest Gump is one of those movies I have seen so many times that I don’t quite know where I stand on it. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. I have never seen Shawshank Redemption, actually.

I caught up on Winter’s Bone and Agora as part of my 2010 cramming, and I was disappointed by both. Winter’s Bone was better in Frozen River and That Evening Sun, and Agora was lifeless.

SJG: I wouldn’t say there is a ton of sex, and the scenes that there are are very short and not very graphic. I would also say they are pretty justifiable. They sort of shine a light on the arc of the relationship. I know what you mean about sex scenes feeling pointless and lacking contribution to the storyline, but I didn’t think that was the case at all here.

There is nudity, but it’s really just an occasional shot of Hathaway’s boobs.

Let’s just hope that Nicole Kidman never receives another nomination. I’ve seen almost all Oscar-nominated performances from the beginning and hers is one of the least deserving nominations, and therefore, even more so, one of the least deserving wins.

Marc, I like how you say you lost credibility when he said Forrest Gump was better than Goodfellas and how you say he’s stubborn about opinions that differ from him and yet… isn’t that what you’re doing to your friend? Differing from his opinion and not budging?

Touche Glenn ;), i was kinda joking about the credibility part, but seriously, do you know many film lovers who think that goodfellas is inferior to gump. And besides, i listen to his arguments and i don’t dismiss them and sometimes we have great arguments. It’s just in my head that his opinions mean less to me than they would. He doesn’t even watch foreign films

Apologies to the Illusionist supporters, but the third Animated Feature nominee is Tangled. No question. It’s already doing really, really well at the box office, AND it made some significant technical advances in terms of CGI animation.